Windows 95 was the first major upgrade to PCs in four-to-five years and Microsoft’s latest attempt to make their clunky GUI more Mac-like…without paying for it. Many hack comedians and Doonsebury went for all the easy jokes on the software’s initial flaws too; may explain why Jay Leno was invited to the ceremony. Apple even took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal mocking the OS’s new ability to give file names more than eight characters; a rather arrogant move as I look back.
It gradually became a standard over the next couple years as it pushed out the more mediocre Windows 3.x that most business computers were running. I recall people still operating with 95 into the early Aughts since 98, XP and ME had worse reputations. Despite it being a standard, 95 was pretty flawed in my opinion. For example, when I was in exile, working for Nortel, the IT department had to hire a pair of temps to reboot or reinstall the OS on every new portable they received from Dell because mass imaging was a weakness.
Looking back though, did Windows 95 erode Apple’s market share further? Yes, but it wasn’t the exclusive cause. Apple had two other self-inflicted wounds at the time. The first was a bad run of poorly manufactured systems across the whole line: the PowerBook 5300 (a nightmare), Performa 52xx/53xx/62xx/63xx, the Color LaserPrinter and System 7.5.x interacted like crud on PowerPC Macs. Even Apple’s most diehard fans were having a crisis of faith given the terrible word-of-mouth circulating on the early Internet. The second was a marketing issue Jobs solved. Apple had too many models which weren’t terribly different from each other and it confused the casual computer shopper. So when the third generation PowerPC Macs made their debut in 1997, Jobs stripped their names down to just G3 and they only came in two models, a tower or a desktop, the end. Little did anyone know, the G3 was just the tip of the turnaround iceberg as Apple’s stock has been selling for as much as $500/share this week. If you held on to when it was about $20/share on the day Jobs took full control around 1998, your insane investment would be worth 700 times more or roughly $14,000/share; you’d really have 28 shares equal that due to the stock splits in 2000, 2005 and 2014.
How the tables have turned too. Microsoft used to be the behemoth the world was dependent on. Its OS ran over 90% of the desktop computers in operation. Now Microsoft is way smaller than Apple, more focused on its Xbox, offers services like IBM, does some cloud computing and tries to compete in the tablet space via its Surface.
If I could time travel back the 25 years, 1995 me would never believe what 2020 me would report about the future. Technology is often full of surprises. Oh yeah, and I’d make 1995 me hold tight on Apple stock, nothing wrong with my life getting the happy Back to the Future ending!